


Julerose June 2018 Collection

by takethembystorm



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-16 23:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 4,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14820596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethembystorm/pseuds/takethembystorm
Summary: A collection of drabbles for Julerose June 2018.





	1. A Single Rose

Juleka frowns at the contents of her locker.

She looks around—no one pays her, the weird, dark girl with an inordinate fondness for black lace and fingerless gloves, any attention—and then back into her locker.

The contents fail to change.

Slowly, she reaches in and brushes a finger along a petal of the single, perfect red rose she’d found lying in her locker that morning.

She’d remembered to lock it, she was _sure_ , and it hadn’t been forced, and there weren’t a whole lot of people who knew her locker combination.  In point of fact there was just one person, and she was _sure_ —Rose wouldn’t be part of a prank like this.

But _who_ then?

The bell rings, jolting her out of her contemplation, and she slams her locker shut with a suddenness that startles her and everyone else within earshot.

“Get a grip, Couffaine,” she mutters to herself.

Rose is waiting for her in her customary seat when Juleka gets to class, sitting with her back ramrod straight.

“Morning,” she says as Juleka slings her backpack off of her shoulder and plops herself down.

“Morning,” Juleka says.

“So did anything nice happen to you recently?” Rose says after a second.

Juleka turns to Rose and quirks an eyebrow.  “Uh,” she says.  “Why?”

“You just look like it,” Rose says.

The eyebrow goes a little further up.

“I care about you?”

Juleka snorts and turns back to the front of the class.

“Someone left me a rose,” Juleka says.

“Oh, that’s sweet, maybe someone likes you—“

“In my locker, which just makes it creepy.”

“—oh.”


	2. Persistence

The next day, Juleka finds nothing in her locker aside from school texts, notebooks, and the lingering fragrance of rose petals.  She collects her things and leaves for class.

Two roses sit atop her desk.

She stares at them.  Her classmates, except for Rose, she notes, are staring at her.

Oh, so that was the game.  Set all of this up and wait to see if she’d fall for it or break down crying or whatever.  Well, she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

She recounts all this to Rose as they walk to the subway station.

“Or,” Rose suggests, “maybe whoever is leaving these is trying to tell you that they want to be with you.”

“So why aren’t they just saying it?”

Rose shrugs and tucks her thumbs into the straps of her backpack.  “Maybe they’re shy or something, or maybe they just wanted to see how you’d react.”

“In which case I’d probably appreciate it more if they were just upfront about it,” Juleka says.

Rose goes quiet.

“Upfront, huh?” she says after a minute.

“Yeah,” Juleka says.  “Sure, let’s assume that this isn’t some Carrie situation and they really are trying to tell me that they like me.  I mean, in that case I’d really prefer if they didn’t dance around the issue and just came out and said it so we could move on and get to the rest of everything.”

“Oh,” Rose says, her voice very small.  “Okay.”


	3. Old Wounds

Juleka remembers the first crush she ever had.  If she had to choose three words to describe it, she would’ve chosen “train”, “wreck”, and “heartbreak”.

Then again, all three of those were more or less safe bets when you were dealing with Chloe Bourgeois.

They’d been ten, and Chloe had been in exactly one of Juleka’s classes and had easily been the prettiest girl that she in her nascent puberty-driven sexuality had ever seen, and Juleka had had a thing for chatty, outgoing, blue-eyed blondes.  So come that Valentine’s Day she’d borrowed a few euro from her older brother, stopped off at the florist for the cheapest floral arrangement that she could find—a bouquet of three red roses with assorted extras—and marched to school with her head held high, her heart singing with the song of young love, and her stomach ready to introduce the half-digested remains of her breakfast to the outside world.

Her stomach, at least, had gotten what it wanted after the rejection.

It had taken a while for her to get back to something approaching normal after that.  The only reason she had at all was probably because there was Rose right there with her with all the emotional support she could offer.  And when this whole debacle with the roses finally pans out and it’s inevitably revealed that Chloe has her fingers in it somehow, she’ll probably be there with ice cream and a movie and a shoulder to cry on.

Still, aside from Rose, she’s still mostly soured on blondes for the time being.


	4. Ignorance

“She hates me,” Rose wails into Alya’s shoulder.  Marinette sits on Rose’s other side, making soothing noises and rubbing soothing circles into her back, none of which seems to stop or even slow the crying.

Alya just wonders when she’d become the mom friend.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Marinette says, soothingly.

It still doesn’t help.

Eventually, the tears slow and then stop, and Alya retreats to the nearest restroom to wring out her shirt, leaving Marinette behind to try to wring an explanation out of the sniffling Rose.

“She said that she thought it was creepy,” she says, after laying out the whole grand plan with the roses.  “She’ll hate me when she finds out and she’s never going to like me and _I love her so much—“_

“Okay, Rose, I’m going to stop you right there, because it sounds like you’re spiraling, and that is the last thing you need right there,” Marinette says.

“And I’d rather not have to dry my shirt out again,” Alya adds as she returns and sits back down.  “Look, Rose, Juleka has been your best friend since forever.  She knows you and trusts you, and even if she doesn’t think too highly of your whole thing with the leaving roses for her, she’ll understand.  Have a little faith in her.”

“You’re sure?” Rose says.

“We’re positive,” Marinette says.


	5. Unto the Breach

The day is innocuous.  The day is bright and sunny with only a few streaks of clouds arcing over the dome of the sky, the birds are chirping, the squirrels are going after everything that looks even slightly edible and unguarded and are generally being a nuisance—and Sabrina, acting under orders from Chloe, no doubt, has dropped a bombshell in her lap.

“I saw Rose put those flowers in your locker,” she’d said.

This was of course _Sabrina_ and by extension Chloe and so their information was about as trustworthy as an American was honest.

But—Rose?  Surely not— _Rose_.  _Rose_.

She’d never really considered that _Rose_ would be interested in her—it had to be—it couldn’t be— _Rose_.

She finds herself stumbling, her mind in a haze, into her room.  The door swings shut and locks as she slumps to the floor, her back to the door, her head in her hands.

_Rose._

Chloe had to be lying— _had_ to be—she couldn’t actually.

She doesn’t go to school that day, or the day after.  Luka doesn’t say anything; neither does her mother.  They give her space, leave her meals outside the door, don’t bother her with questions, for which she’s infinitely grateful.

Rose visits on the third day.

Her mother and Luka let her in, and she can’t really blame them, she hadn’t said anything about what Chloe had said and _shit, she’s knocking at the door—_

“Jules?” Rose says.  “Jules, are you okay?”

She waits a second, then repeats herself.

Should she let her in?

“Please, Jules, you’re making me worried.”

She shouldn’t.

“Jules?”

She unlocks the door and lets her in.

“Hey, are you okay?” Rose says as she looks worriedly up at her friend.

“Do you love me?” Juleka replies.

Rose goes stiff and slowly starts to turn as red as her namesake.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Juleka says.

“At first it was because I wanted to do something, y’know, big and romantic,” Rose says.  “And then you said all that stuff about how you’d prefer it if I just came out and told you, and then I had a little bit of a panic attack and I was going to tell you the day before yesterday and then you, uh.  Weren’t there.”

“Oh,” Juleka says.  “I’m sorry.”

“I am too,” Rose says.  “For worrying you.”

Juleka finds herself smiling as her vision goes watery.  “You’re such a dork, Rose.”

“I love you,” Rose says.


	6. Honeymoon

Chloe rolls her eyes and makes a gagging noise as she mimes sticking a finger down her throat.  Sabrina nods in sycophantic agreement.  Marinette and Alya direct glares in their direction.

Juleka and Rose don’t hear, or don’t care.  They’re giggling over a video on Rose’s phone, their fingers interlaced below the desk, their heads resting companionably together in a perfect picture of young contentedness.

If they hear the waspish, _sotto voce_ comments that Chloe makes to Sabrina, or the heated replies that Marinette and Alya direct back at them, they make no sign that they’ve taken notice.

They’re happy in each other.  It’s enough for them.


	7. Bystander

Luka knows what he looks like and knows the assumptions most people make when they see him and his attire.  Most people see the dyed hair and the guitar and the leather jacket and they think: “hippie”, or possibly “stoner”.  Or both.

It’s fine by him.  He likes being underestimated.

Of course this applies neither to his mother nor to his baby sister, both of whom know better and both of whom just won’t stop teasing him about how much of a nerd he is at every chance they get—but that’s beside the point.  The point is that he’s a lot more observant than most people give him credit for.  And what’s he’s observing with his baby sister is—encouraging.

Her friend—sorry, “friend”—Rose had dropped by and they’d spent a few hours in her room together.  And then Rose had left and Juleka had come out of her room for the first time in several days with what was for her the equivalent of an ear-to-ear grin.

Well, it didn’t take any especial intelligence to work out that Juleka had finally gotten over her issues and hitched up with Rose.  Good for the both of them.

Juleka was happy.  That’s all that he needs to know.


	8. Days to Remember

There are certain days that Juleka knows she’ll always remember.  The day she first knew she was a lesbian, the day that Chloe had torn her heart in two and stomped on it, every single disastrous and that one good photo day she’d ever had, all of them were indelibly etched into the various synapses of her brain.

Come to think of it, it was actually somewhat concerning how many of those memories were bad ones, or were at least mildly vexing.

Well, at least she had a good one now to put beside them.

She smiles even as the thought brings the memory back in full clarity.  Rose, blushing happily, her lips forming the words “I”, “love”, and “you”.  Mmmm, Rose’s lips—

It’s Juleka’s turn to blush happily.


	9. Certain Things

If there’s anything that Juleka notices about Rose—and _mmmm,_ are there things to notice—it’s that she moves with grace.  Like a dancer, every step almost gliding, her weight always centered, her balance always sure.

She wonders where Rose had learned to move like that.  It must’ve been a while ago if it had practically become instinct for her to move that way, with every step and every motion like quiet smoke wafting through the breeze.

She realizes that she’s been staring at Rose when her girlfriend waves a hand in front of her eyes.

“Hey,” Rose says.  “Hey.  Class is over.”

Juleka blinks and refocuses.

“You all right?” Rose says.  “You were out of it for like, five minutes.  Ms. Bustier commented.”

Juleka feels the blush crawling up her cheeks and down her neck.  “Oh,” she says.  “Really?”

“Twice,” Rose confirms.  “She just gave up after the second try.  I think she realized that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble trying a third time.”

“Ugh,” Juleka says, burying her face in her hands.

“What were you even thinking about?” Rose asks.

“Nothing!”

Rose stares skeptically at Juleka, but lets the matter slide with no more than a thoroughly skeptical “uh _huh_.”

“Say, Rose?” Juleka says as they collect their things and leave the class.

“Yes?”

“Do you do any, uh, dancing or anything?  Or acrobatics, gymnastics, that sort of thing?”

Rose gives her girlfriend a quizzical look.  “Why?”

“Just curious.”

“No.  I have taken muay thai once a week for the past couple of years, though.”

Juleka pauses to take in this information with a thoughtful “ _huh._ ”


	10. Love Poems

Juleka has been acting strangely for the past couple days, Rose notices.  Furtive.  Twitchy.  Jumpy.

Okay so at least some of it is her habit of sneaking up behind her girlfriend and picking her bodily off the ground without any sort of warning whatsoever, but she’s mostly sure that it’s something else as well.

Rose does her best to do a little more sneaking and a little less picky-upy over the next week or so, but discovers nothing that explains Juleka’s new behavior.

“Or you could just ask her,” Alya tells an inconsolable Rose at lunch that Friday.  “I mean, you’re her girlfriend, Rose, she’s going to tell you if you just ask.”  Alya looks helplessly at Marinette and Nino, who for some reason had decided to eat their lunches several meters away on the other side of a couple of very large trees.  “Rose, just trust me on this, okay?  Trust Juleka.”

So Rose girds her loins and asks Juleka the next day when they go out for ice cream.

Juleka blinks and blushes.  “Oh,” she says.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“Oh no,” Rose says.  “You didn’t.”

“Uh _huh_ ,” Juleka says.

“But now that we’re on the subject what’s been up with you?” Rose asks.

Juleka reaches up and plays with one of her bangs, casting her gaze down at her feet.

“Jules?”

Juleka grunts.  She reaches into her bag, rummages briefly, and pulls out a notebook.  “Don’t laugh,” she says, and tosses it to Rose.

Rose flips it open to the first page.  Then to the second.  The corners of her lips twitch.

“I asked you not to laugh,” Juleka says, reddening.

“I didn’t,” Rose says.

“You were going to,” Juleka says.

“I wasn’t, I swear!” Rose says.  “Pinky promise!”

She reads through another couple of pages.  Her hand comes up to her mouth once, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

“It’s okay,” Juleka sighs.  “I know, it’s bad.”

“It’s not, it’s not,” Rose says.  “I mean—“

“Rose.”

“Okay, it’s not _great_ ,” Rose admits.  “But it’s better than what I can do.  And I do think that it’s very sweet that you’re writing—“

“ _Rose.”_

“—okay, trying to write me love poems.”


	11. The First Kiss

Rose looks at Alya and Nino, who are presently trying to suck each other’s faces off.  She looks at Marinette and Adrien, who are making googly eyes at each other when they think the other isn’t looking.

She looks at Juleka, who is busy writing something in her little notebook, her other hand being used as a headstand.

Something warm burns deep in her gut and she quickly averts her gaze.

The feeling continues to seethe deep inside her when they go to a nearby café for a quick bite, and bubbles through the rest of their schoolday.

“You all right, Rose?” Juleka asks as they start walking towards their subway station.  “You’ve been staring at me all day.”

Rose squirms, but relents.

“I was just thinking,” she says.  “We’ve been dating for almost two months now, and we still haven’t y’know, really, uh—“

Juleka waits for another minute before Rose squeaks out, “kissed?”

“Oh,” Juleka says.

“And I really really really want to kiss you right now and I don’t know how to deal with it,” Rose says.

“Here?” Juleka says.  “In front of all these people?”

“Yes,” Rose says.

Juleka reaches down, cups Rose’s chin, and leans down.  Her lips are the briefest, lightest brush across Rose’s own, but the contact still sets her heart to jittering.

They hold hands the rest of the way to the station, and can’t quite manage to look at each other.  It may have had something to do with the furious blush across their faces.


	12. You Romantic Dork

Juleka opens her locker and frowns at its contents.  She pulls out a book and a notebook, slides them into her bookbag, and shuts the locker, spinning the dial on the combination lock before she leaves for class.

She slides into her seat next to Rose and gives her a peck on the cheek before she says, “Rose, why did I find a dozen roses in my locker?”

Rose gives her a cheerful grin.  “Did you like them?”

Juleka sighs.  “Yes, but Rose, I already said yes, you don’t need to keep trying to woo me.”

“I want to keep trying to woo you,” Rose says.  She leans in closer.  “So, Madamoiselle Couffaine, will you be mine?”

Juleka swears that she can see Rose’s eyes sparkle.  Not a reflection of the lights off of her eyes, actually _sparkle._   That shouldn’t be physically possible.

She sighs, leans down, and gives her girlfriend a peck on the lips.  “Yes, you romantic dork, I will be yours.”


	13. Loss of Virtue

Juleka finds yet _another_ batch of roses in her locker the next morning.

“Okay, Rose,” Juleka says as she marches into class.  “We need to talk.”

“About what?” Rose says as she follows her girlfriend out of the classroom.

“You need to stop spending so much money on floral arrangements, Rose,” Juleka says.

“I’m not spending _that_ much—“

“How much was the bouquet yesterday?”

Rose looks down at her shoes and mutters something.

“What was that?”

“I said, a couple dozen euro,” Rose says.

“And how much was this?” Juleka says, holding up the flower crown she’d found that morning.

Mumble mumble.

“How much, Rose?”

“Another few dozen.”

Juleka sighs.  “Rose, _please_ stop spending so much money on floral arrangements for me.  I love them, I really do, but that is just _so much money,_ Rose.”

She holds up the flower crown.  “Also I know that you’re getting your ideas for these from a Victorian flower language manual online or something, but I’m fairly sure you didn’t mean what this is supposed to mean.  Aren’t these given out to new brides at their weddings, Rose?”

Rose doesn’t look up.

Juleka flushes as red as the roses in her hand.  “Oh.  Oh my.”


	14. The Power of Love

Another day, another emotionally-compromised individual turned into a nightmare of a supervillain by evil butterflies.

This one happens to be another love-themed one—sometimes Juleka wishes that they didn’t live in a city that was so stereotypically involved with that one particular _thing_ —who’s running around turning people into their loyal slaves.

_Bzzap._

And now Chat freaking Noir has been turned against them again.

“Come on,” Juleka says as she drags Rose through the crowded streets filled with crowds of screaming people.  “Let’s go find a basement where we can wait this out.”

 _Bzzap._   Ladybug is engaging in some witty banter or something.  Juleka concentrates on getting them out without either of them getting trampled.

 _Bzzap_.

Juleka nearly gets her arm jerked out of its socket as Rose comes to a dead halt.

Oh, _shit_.

She looks behind her to see Rose’s eyes glowing a bright pink, her head tilted back slightly, the tendons in her throat standing out as her jaw tightens and her teeth clack together.

“Oh, no,” Juleka says.

She considers her options.  She could try to get Rose out of here with the increase in the associated risk of getting herself zapped in the process, or she could leave Rose and try to save her own skin or she could—

Before Juleka can run fully through the panicked mental list, Rose’s head snaps further back, her spine bowing in an arch of pain, and she screams out, her voice shrill and furious, “You!  Can’t!  Have me!”

She goes bonelessly limp a second later and nearly gets run down by a large man hurrying away.  Juleka pulls her to the side of the street and ducks into an alley, away from the press of the crowd.

“Rose?” Juleka says, shaking her trembling girlfriend by the shoulders.  “Rose, are you all right?”

“I could _hear_ him,” Rose says faintly, her eyes distant.  “I could _hear_ him in my head.  I could _hear_ him in my head.  He was telling me to worship him, to _obey_ him, I could _hear_ him—“

Rose lurches to one side and vomits.

“How did you break free?” Juleka asks her once she’s finished.

“Thought of you,” Rose mumbles, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.  “Thought of you, n’ he asked, he asked me, told me to _worship_ him and I told him no, n’ he told me to give him my heart and I said no, I’d already given it to you—“

She bends over again and dry-heaves.

Juleka picks Rose up and carries her away.


	15. Coping

Juleka sits quietly off to the side as Rose beats the literal stuffing out of a punching bag with her hands and knees and elbows and one particularly vicious kick that nearly sends the bag into a long wall mirror, her hair flying into a golden halo around her head, her expression level and controlled.

Rose was recovering.  Not speedily, not super well, but she was making progress.  Not a _lot_ , it seemed to her sometimes, but she was definitely making progress.

Juleka wishes that she had the toolset to hurry that progress along.  But she doesn’t.

So she’s here now, waiting for Rose to finish her muay thai class, feeling the urge to do something, _anything_ , bury itself in her gut.

She sits there, fiddling with a water bottle until the instructor calls the class to a halt and Rose walks off the padded mats and collapses in a chair next to her, breathing hard.  Juleka hands the bottle over and Rose takes it without a word.

“Let me see your hands,” Juleka says after Rose has chugged down half of the bottle.

Rose sets the bottle to the side and offers Juleka her hands, wrapped up in protective tape.  She peels away the tape, layer by layer, and runs the pad of her thumb over the rough and reddened skin she finds beneath.

“Hey,” Juleka says as she reaches up and cradles Rose’s cheek.

She looks up at her girlfriend, sweat-stained, her hair mussed and uncombed, still in a wild halo around her head, and feels her heart beat painfully in her chest.

“You’re beautiful,” Juleka says.


	16. Mystery

Juleka is sometimes a complete mystery to Rose.  Granted, she probably knew Juleka better than anyone else in school, she was her girlfriend after all, but there were still some things that Rose just did not understand about her.

For one thing, Rose doesn’t understand how Juleka can be such a pillar of calm and repose even now.

Okay, so not having to engage in a mental arm-wrestling contest with a crazed supervillain probably did wonders for Juleka’s mental health, but _still_.  All these attacks, all these life-threatening events day after day, all the running, all the screaming, all the—

Rose takes a deep breath.

It had to take its toll was her point.  She was certainly reaching the end of her line, and she knows that there’s at least one or two others in class that are too.  Why isn’t Juleka among their number?

Rose takes a breath and squeezes down on Juleka’s hand, feeling her girlfriend squeeze back.

None of that really matters in the end, does it?

All that matters is that Juleka is here for her now.


	17. Reassurance

“Hey Jules?” Rose says, hugging Juleka’s arm to herself.  Light and lurid images play across their faces as the movie winds its way through a somewhat unbelievably gory and explosive-laden scene.

“Yes?”

“You love me, right?”

Juleka sighs and rests her head atop Rose’s own.

“I do,” Juleka says.  After a second she adds, “Tell me something, Rose?”

“What is it?” Rose says.  Onscreen, someone gets kicked off of a high building.

“What’s up with you?” Juleka says.  “You’ve been asking me whether I love you a lot lately.  Is everything okay?”

Silence, except for a Wilhelm scream from the movie.

“Look, if you’re not, you don’t need to tell me,” Juleka says.  She runs her hand up and down Rose’s arm and leans her cheek into the top of Rose’s head.  “Just—I’m a little worried about you, Rose.  I feel like you’re not entirely yourself these days, and it worries me.  I don’t know if it was something that I did or whether it’s related to one of the attacks or what but—“

Juleka stops and sighs.  “I’m sorry, I’m babbling.”

Rose pauses the movie.

“You’re not wrong, though,” she says.  “I’ve been feeling—less than myself recently.”

“Okay,” Juleka says.

“It’s nothing you did,” Rose adds hastily.  “But—I just need more time, okay?  I just need time and some patience.”

She hugs Juleka a little closer.  “Can you give that to me?”

“Of course,” Juleka says.


	18. All's Right with the World

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and no one is screaming.  A good day in Juleka’s book.

The only thing that would make it better is if Rose was here with them.

“Movie starts in twenty minutes,” Alya says, checking her phone.  “We’ll need to go in soon if anyone wants snacks.”

“We can wait a little longer,” Marinette says.  She glances at Juleka.  “I mean, we’re going to have lunch right after anyways, so it’d be kinda pointless to waste money here, right?”

“Eh, speak for yourself,” Alix says, slouching against a wall.  “I could go for some Skittles and a soda.”

“Go then,” Marinette says.  “We’ll meet you inside.”

Alix looks at them, then shrugs and traipses into the theater.  A gust of cool, air-conditioned air blows her hair back as she walks through the doors.

They wait.

“I don’t think Rose is coming, Juleka,” Alya says ten minutes later.  “I’m sorry, but we really do need to go in now.”

“Five more minutes,” Juleka says.  “Just go in, I’ll be in in five minutes.”

“All right,” Marinette says after a look towards Alya.  “See you.”

Juleka waits another two minutes before she gives up.  As she turns towards the doors, she hears running footsteps, but she doesn’t turn.

A slight mistake in her case, as Rose cannons into her and uses her mass to slow herself down from a dead sprint to a stumble and then a halt.  Juleka nearly goes face-first into the concrete.

“Sorry,” Rose pants, “I’m late.  Subway got delayed.”

“Rose,” Juleka says, recovering her balance.  “You’re uh.  You’re here.”

Rose looks up at her and gives her girlfriend a small smile.  “Yeah.”

Juleka gives Rose a quick, tight hug, then offers her hand to her.  “Shall we go in then?” she says.

Rose takes it, and they walk in together.


End file.
